BigBox Situation Update

Staff Member

I'll try and give you some information about where we are with the BigBox pre-orders, what's happening in general and when things will ship!

Titan Upgrade kits.

These are quite literally going out the door today. Cat is packing these and shipping them out as I type.

Motors

We are waiting for motors from China, we have arranged to have a batch air freighted over and they will be here in about two weeks time. In stock now we have ~60 Pro Kits and ~20 Dual Kits.

Printed Parts

We are changing our printing process from mass production of a few parts to pre-grouped kits which can be bagged off the printer and then added to a general printed parts box. This saves a huge amount of time in packing and sorting.

While we move to the new system Chris is sorting through the old parts and bagging them up into the general and options bags we now use.

This is quite a lengthy process but once we have moved to the new system things will be considerably faster!

Laser cutting Plywood and Acrylic.

The plywood is all cut and Ian is putting it through the sanding machines. As soon as he is done we will be shipping plywood kits. We are cutting acrylic too and will be shipping those out when we have full frame kits ready.

General information.

On top of all this we are moving the print farm from it's current location to a new specially built room directly below where we will have space for 30 printers. At the minute we have some electricians in to install all the required power outputs. There is also a load of new shelving for the room to be put together.

If you have any questions, or queries please post them below. Thank you for your patience!

Greg, all we have been really wanting is information. We know there have been issues and from what I have seen is that most of the community understands that and have no problems there. What almost everyone seems to have a problem with is that we seems to get left in the dark for weeks at a time when something happens. If something is going to get delayed. Post us a message with a quick explanation of what happened and an idea what we can expect. We understand that something else might happen and we won't be holding y'all to exact dates. We just want to know what is going on. We think you have a great product, we think you folks are working your butts off. But at times you seem to forget that without keeping us informed about what is going on we start getting a bit worried about the state of things.

The update is welcome, but still no real information in there that helps people understand when they are getting their kits...

If the plywood kits are ready to go as soon as Ian finishes the sanding, when you you expect that to be..?

Glad to hear you are cutting acrylic, but when will you actually have full frame kits ready to ship?

Given you have 60/20 sets of motors in stock and more coming in two weeks, will the motors in stock cover two weeks worth of shipments or are you going to run out?

Will the motors in stock cover the plywood orders you will ship, assuming those orders are going to ship within the next two weeks?

Will there be any left over for acrylic orders, assuming you actually have frames ready to ship) or are those all going to have to wait for the new motors to arrive?

Finally, it has to be asked, why are you making such major changes to your whole production capability right at the point when you were supposed to be in the middle of volume shipments? The numbers you needed to produce, the components you required to do this have been known for some time, and the cash required to fund it has been in your hands for the same amount of time, so why does this all appear to be happening at the last minute?

Finally, it has to be asked, why are you making such major changes to your whole production capability right at the point when you were supposed to be in the middle of volume shipments? The numbers you needed to produce, the components you required to do this have been known for some time, and the cash required to fund it has been in your hands for the same amount of time, so why does this all appear to be happening at the last minute?

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This is a good question and it does all look rather last minute. These are changes that we have been wanting to do for some time and the unexpected delays that we encoured with the Z-Axis Leadscrews and other complications threw our plans off completely. We are adjusting now while we can. The printfarm production is ahead of everything else and now is a good time to make the changes in that respect.

That's all I really want along with everyone else. Imagine if something like this was said, "Edge will be released friday, and your Bigbox will be shipped between the 18th-20th". (Note: This was not said)

Thanks, good news! Now, on the communications/informations side, we have sort of got used to weeks of silence and speculation followed by a sudden blur of info. One idea would be a weekly status update, even if things seems slow at the moment any little tidbit (or even gossip) is better than silence.